The McCaffertys: MATT

Matt has never met a woman who wouldn’t succumb to the McCafferty charm. But beautiful Kelly Dillinger, the cop assigned to his sister’s hit-and-run case, proves indifferent to his attention. Her all-business attitude pricks his ego…and fires up his blood. The more she resists, the more determined he becomes to break down her defenses. Matt might think that law enforcement is no place for a lady, but he might soon find himself making a plea for passion.

Praise for Lisa Jackson

“Provocative prose, an irresistible plot and finely crafted characters make up Jackson’s latest contemporary sizzler.”

—Publishers Weekly on Wishes

“Lisa Jackson takes my breath away.”

—New York Times bestselling author Linda Lael Miller

COLD BLOODED

“Set a bare six months after the shocking events of Hot Blooded, Cold Blooded grabs you by the throat from page one and does not let you off the edge of your seat for a moment after that.” —Romance At Its Best

“Taking up where last year’s phenomenal Hot Blooded left off, Cold Blooded is a tight, romantic, edge-of-your-seat thriller.” —Romantic Times BOOKclub

“Cold Blooded is an exciting serial killer thriller…an entertaining tale.” —BookBrowser

“Crisp dialogue, a multilayered plot and a carefully measured pace build suspense in this chilling read that earns the WordWeaving Award for Excellence.”

—Wordweaving.com

THE NIGHT BEFORE

“Lisa Jackson pulls out all the stops in this brilliantly conceived, chilling, twisted psychological thriller that contains murder, mental illness, incest, love and hope. The Night Before is a page-turner that will have you racing toward the finish.” —Reader to Reader

The Night Before “will keep the brightest mystery buff guessing who done it. A typical thriller is a meander through a dust bowl compared to The Night Before’s tumult down a rocky mountainside.” —Affaire de Coeur

“Jackson’s newest suspense keeps you riveted until the very end.”

—Old Book Barn Gazette

“A thrilling roller coaster of emotions, betrayals, murder, dark secrets and horrifying sins that will enthrall the reader. The author is a master when it comes to romantic thrillers…Lisa Jackson sets her own standards [in] women’s fiction today, weaving her magic and providing us with literary works of art.”

—The Road to Romance

“An exciting romantic psychological suspense filled with plenty of twists.”

—Allreaders.com

WHISPERS

“Author Lisa Jackson delivers a tour de force performance with this dynamic and complicated tale of love, greed and murder. This is Ms. Jackson at her very best.”

—Romantic Times BOOKclub

“What a story! This is a perfectly put together, complex story with more than one relationship and mystery going on…a perfect meld of past and present. I loved it!”

—Rendezvous

“There are hints of Romeo and Juliet when children from two small-town feuding families fall in love. Characters are fully realized, multi-faceted and dynamic…the plot is full of subtle intrigues, forbidden passions and long-kept secrets that culminate in an explosive climax. Author Lisa Jackson has delivered another must-read romantic suspense novel.” —Gothic Journal

The McCaffertys: Matt

Lisa Jackson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Other classics from Lisa Jackson and HQN Books

Strangers two-in-one suspense collection featuring “Mystery Man” and “Obsession”

Tears of Pride

The McCaffertys: Thorne

The McCaffertys: Slade

Best Kept Lies: Randi McCafferty’s Story

Dear Reader,

I think this is a fabulous idea! HQN is republishing one of my most popular series: THE McCAFFERTYS.

When the first book of the miniseries, The McCaffertys: Thorne, first came out, I received a lot of letters and tons of e-mail asking questions about the McCafferty brothers and their wayward younger sister. With each new book in the series, I received more and more mail. The sexy, irreverent McCafferty brothers were extremely popular. And I can see why. I fell in love with each of these men who were tough, rugged and dedicated to their family and strong Montana ranching roots.

In each of the books one McCafferty brother discovers true love while trying to protect his younger sister and solve the mystery surrounding her baby. The series was finally complete with Best Kept Lies: Randi McCafferty’s Story. The mystery surrounding the paternity of Randi McCafferty’s baby and the danger facing the McCafferty clan is wrapped up in the final book, where eventually Randi, too, discovers love everlasting for her and her son.

CEO Thorne McCafferty has returned to Grand Hope, Montana, and the Flying M Ranch intent on taking charge of the situation with his sister. Once he’s assured that Randi and her baby are healthy, he plans to cut and run, but that’s before he meets beautiful Dr. Nicole Stevenson, a woman he knew as a girl but barely remembers. For the first time in his life Thorne’s about to lose control…

Rancher Matt McCafferty doesn’t believe he could be interested in a professional woman of any kind, least of all a cop. But during the investigation of his sister’s hit-and-run accident, he runs into a spitfire of a detective in Kelly Dillinger. Then his mind, his heart and his life changes…

Maverick Slade McCafferty never expected to run across Jamie Parsons again. The last time he saw her she was a young girl, one who had willingly given him her innocence. Now she’s all grown up, a no-nonsense lawyer who won’t give him the time of day. Or so she thinks.

Headstrong reporter Randi McCafferty doesn’t want, need, or accept a bodyguard, but her brothers have hired Kurt Striker to watch her back. Kurt doesn’t seem too thrilled with the job either, but as the danger mounts, the tension and unspoken passion ignite, just as a killer is ready to strike.

I’ve posted excerpts from the books on my Web site and I even have a new contest and drawing to celebrate THE McCAFFERTYS. So visit me at www.lisajackson.com and sign up. You just might win an autographed Lisa Jackson classic!

I hope you love the McCaffertys as much as I do!

Lisa Jackson

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Early May

“You miserable piece of horseflesh,” Matt McCafferty growled as he climbed to his feet, dusted the back of his jeans and glowered at the wild-eyed Appaloosa colt. There was a reason the damned beast was named Diablo Rojo, the orneriest two-year-old on the Flying M Ranch. A challenge. In all his thirty-seven years, Matt had never met a horse he couldn’t tame. But he was having second thoughts about Red Devil. Major ones. The horse had spirit. Fire. Not easily tamed. Like a lot of women Matt had run across. “Okay, you bastard, let’s start over.”

He reached down and picked up his hat. Slapping it hard against his thigh, he squinted into the lowering Montana sun as it started its slow descent behind the western hills. “You and I, Devil, we’re gonna come to a reckoning and we’re gonna do it this afternoon.”

The colt tossed his fiery head and snorted noisily, then lifted his damned tail like a banner and trotted along the far fence line, the empty saddle on his back creaking mockingly. Damned fool horse. Matt squared his hat on his head. “It isn’t over,” he assured the snorting animal.

“It may as well be.”

Matt froze at the sound of his father’s voice. Turning on the worn heel of his boot, he watched as Juanita pushed John Randall’s wheelchair across the parking lot separating the rambling, two-storied ranch house from the series of connecting paddocks that surrounded the stables. Matt didn’t harbor much love for his bastard of a father, but he couldn’t help feel an ounce of pity for the once-robust man now confined to “the damned contraption,” as he referred to the chair.

John Randall’s sparse white hair caught in the wind and his skin was pale and thin, but there was still a spark in his blue eyes. And he loved this spread. More than he loved anything, including his children.

“I tried to talk him out of this,” Juanita reprimanded as she parked the wheelchair near the fence where Harold, John Randall’s partially crippled old springer spaniel, had settled into a patch of shade thrown by a lone pine tree. “But you know how it is. He is too terco…stubborn, for his own good.”

“And it’s served me well,” the old man said as he used the sun-bleached rails of the fence to pull himself to his full height. Lord, he was thin—too thin. His jeans and plaid shirt hung loosely from his once-robust frame. But he managed a tough-as-old-leather smile as he leaned over the top bar and watched his middle son.

“Maybe you can talk some sense into him,” Juanita said, sending Matt a worried glance and muttering something about loco, prideful men.

“I doubt it. I never could before.”

The older McCafferty waved Juanita off. “I’m fine. Needed some fresh air. Now I want to talk to Matt. He’ll bring me inside when we’re through.”

Juanita didn’t seem convinced, but Matt nodded. “I think I can handle him,” he said to the woman who had helped raise him. Clucking her tongue at the absurdity of the situation, Juanita bustled off to the house, the only home Matt had known growing up.

“That one,” John Randall said, hitching his chin back to the wayward colt. “He’ll give ya a run for your money.” He slid a knowing glance at his second-born. “Like a lot of women.”

Matt was irritated. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and swatted at a horsefly that got a little too close for comfort. “Is that what you came all the way out here to say to me, the reason you had Juanita push you outside?”

“Nope.” With an effort the older man dug into the pocket of his jeans. “I got somethin’ here for ya.”

“What?” Matt was instantly suspicious. His father’s gifts never came without a price.

“Somethin’I want ya to have—oh, here we go.” John Randall withdrew a big silver buckle that winked in the bright Montana sun. Inlaid upon the flat surface was a gold bucking bronco, still as shiny as the day John Randall had won it at a rodeo in Canada more than fifty years earlier. He dropped it into his son’s calloused hand.

“You used to wear this all the time,” Matt observed, his jaw growing tight.

“Yep. Reminded me of my piss-and-vinegar years.” John Randall settled back in his wheelchair, and his eyes clouded a bit. “Good years,” he added thoughtfully, then squinted upward to stare at his son. “I don’t have much longer on this earth, boy,” he said, and before Matt could protest, his father raised a big-knuckled hand to silence him. “We both know it so there’s no sense in arguin’ the facts. The man upstairs, he’s about to call me home…that is, if the devil don’t take me first.”

Matt clenched his jaw. Didn’t say a word. Waited.

“I already spoke to Thorne about the fact that I’m dyin’, and seein’ as you’re the next in line, I thought I’d talk to you next. Slade…well, I’ll catch up to him soon. Now, I know I’ve made mistakes in my life, the good Lord knows I failed your mother….”

Matt didn’t comment, didn’t want to even think about the bleak time when John Randall took up with a much younger woman, divorced his wife and introduced his three sons to Penelope, “Penny” Henley, who would become their stepmother and give them all a half sister whom none of them wanted to begin with.

“I have a lot of regrets about all that,” John Randall said over the sigh of the wind, “but it’s all water under the bridge now since both Larissa and Penny are dead.” He rubbed his jaw and cleared his throat. “Never thought I’d bury two wives.”

“A wife and an ex-wife,” Matt clarified.

The old man’s thin lips pursed, but he didn’t argue. “What I want from you—from all my children—is grandchildren. You know that. It’s an old man’s dream, I know, but it’s only natural. I’d like to go to my grave in peace with the knowledge that you’ll find yourself a good woman and settle down, have a family, and that the McCafferty name will go on for a few more generations.”

“There’s lots of time—”

“Not for me, there ain’t!” John Randall snapped.

Feeling as if he was being manipulated for the umpteenth time by his father, Matt tried to hand the buckle back. “If this is some kind of bribe or deal or—”

“No bribe.” The old man spit in disgust. “I want you to have that buckle because it means something to me, and since you rode rodeo a few years back, I thought you might appreciate it.” He wagged a finger at the buckle. “Turn it over.”

Matt flipped the smooth piece of metal and read the engraving on the backside. “To my cowboy. Love forever, Larissa.” His throat closed for a minute when he thought of his mother with her shiny black hair and laughing brown eyes, which had saddened over the years of her marriage. From a free spirit, she’d become imprisoned on this ranch and had sought her own kind of solace and peace that she’d never found in the bottles she’d hidden in the old house she’d grown to despise.

Matt’s gut twisted. He missed her. Bad. And the old man had wronged her. There were just no two ways about it.

“Larissa had it engraved after I won it. Hell, she was a fool for me back then.” The wrinkles around John Randall’s mouth and eyes deepened with sadness, and there was a tiny shadow of guilt that chased across his eyes. “So, now I want you to have it, Matthew.”

Matt’s fingers tightened over the sharp edges of the buckle, but he didn’t say a word. Couldn’t.

“And I want me some grandbabies. That’s not too much for an old man to ask.”

“I’m not married.”

“Then get yourself hitched.” His father gave him a head-to-toe once-over. “Fine, strappin’ man like you shouldn’t have too much trouble.”

“Maybe I don’t believe in marriage.”

“Then maybe you’re a fool.”

Matt traced the silhouette of the bucking bronco with one finger. “It could be I learned from the best.”

“So unlearn it,” John Randall ordered, just as he always did. His way or the highway. Matt had chosen the latter.

“I’ve got me a horse to break,” he said. “And my own place to run.”

“I was hopin’ you’d be stayin’ on.” There was a hint of desperation in his father’s voice, but Matt stood firm. There was just too much water under the damned bridge—muddy, treacherous water fed by a swift current of lies and deceit, the kind of water a man could slowly drown in. Matt had come to the ranch to mend some emotional fences with the old man and to help the foreman, Larry Todd, for a week or so, but his own spread, a few hundred acres close to the Idaho border, needed his attention.

“I can’t, Dad,” he said finally as he followed the path of a wasp as it flew toward the back porch. “Maybe it’s time to get you inside.”

“For God’s sake, don’t try to mollycoddle me, son. It’s not like I’m gonna catch my death out here today.” John Randall folded his hands in his lap and looked between the old slats of the fence to the hard pan of the paddock where the Appaloosa, still wearing an empty saddle, pawed the ground, kicking up dust. “I’ll watch while you try to break him. It’ll be interesting to see who’ll win. You or Diablo.”

Matt lifted a disbelieving eyebrow. “You sure?”

“Ye-up.”

“Fine.” Matt squared his hat on his head and climbed over the fence. “But it’s not gonna be much of a contest,” he said, more to the horse than the man who had sired him. He strode forward with renewed determination, his eyes fixed on the Appaloosa’s sleek muscles that quivered as he approached. Few things in life beat Matt McCafferty.

A high-strung colt wasn’t one of them.

Nor was his father.

Nope. His weakness, if he had one, was women. Fiery-tempered, bullheaded women in particular. The kind he avoided like the plague.

And now his father wanted him to find a woman, tie the knot and start raising a passel of babies.

He nearly laughed as he reached for the reins, and Diablo had the nerve to snort defiantly.

No way in hell was Matt McCafferty getting married. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. That’s just the way it was.

CHAPTER ONE

The following November

She’d met him before.

Too many times to count.

That didn’t mean she had to like him.

No, sir.

As far as Detective Kelly Dillinger was concerned, Matt McCafferty was just plain bad news. Pure and simple, cut from the same biased, sanctimonious, self-serving cloth as his brothers and his bastard of a father before him.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t look good. If you liked the rough-and-tumble, tough-as-rawhide cowboy type, Matt McCafferty was the man for you. His rugged appeal was legendary in Grand Hope. He and his older and younger brothers had been considered the best catches in the entire county for years. But Kelly prided herself on being different from most of the women who wanted to swoon whenever they heard the McCafferty name.

So they were handsome.

So they were sexy.

So they had money.

So what?

These days their reputations had tarnished a bit, notoriety had taken its toll, and the oldest of the lot, Thorne, was rumored to be losing his status as an eligible bachelor and marrying a local woman doctor.

Not so the second brother, Matt. The one, it seemed, she was going to have to deal with right now.

He was muscling open the door to the Grand Hope office of the sheriff’s department with one broad shoulder and bringing with him a rush of frigid winter air and snowflakes that melted instantly the minute they encountered the sixty-eight degrees maintained by a wheezing furnace hidden somewhere in the basement of this ancient brick building.

Matt McCafferty. Great. Just…damned great. She already had a headache and was up to her eyeballs in paperwork, a ream of which could be applied to the McCafferty case—no, make that cases, plural—alone. But she couldn’t ignore him, either. She stared through the glass of her enclosed office and saw him stride across the yellowing linoleum floor, barely stopping at the gate that separated the reception area from the office, then sweep past the receptionist on a cloud of self-righteous fury. Kelly disliked the man on sight, but then she had her own personal ax to grind when it came to the McCaffertys.

There was fire in McCafferty’s brown eyes and anger in his tight, blade-thin lips and the stubborn set of his damnably square jaw. Yep, cut from the same cloth as the others, she thought as she climbed to her feet and opened the door to the office at the same time as he was about to pound on the scarred oak panels.

“Mr. McCafferty.” She feigned a smile. “A pleasure to see you again.”

“Cut the bull,” he said without preamble.

“Okay.” He was blunt if nothing else. “Why don’t you come in…” But he’d already crossed the threshold and was inside the small glassed-in room, pacing the short distance from one wall to the other.

Stella Gamble, the plump, nervous receptionist, had abandoned her post and was fidgeting at the door, her bright red fingernails catching light from the humming fluorescent tubing overhead. “I tried to stop him, really I did,” she said, shaking her head as her tight blond curls bounced around her flushed cheeks. “He wouldn’t listen.”

“A family trait.”

“I’m sorry—”

“It’s all right, Stella. Relax. I needed to talk to one of the McCafferty brothers, anyway,” Kelly assured her, though that was stretching the truth quite a bit. A conversation with Thorne, Slade or especially Matt wasn’t on her agenda right this minute, not when Nathaniel Biggs was calling every two hours, certain that someone had stolen his prize bull last night, Perry Carmichael had reported an odd aura suspended over the copse of oak trees behind his machine shed out on Old Dupont Road and Dora Haines was missing again, probably wandering around the foothills in nineteen-degree weather with a storm threatening to blast in from the Bitterroots by nightfall. Not that the McCafferty case wasn’t important—it just wasn’t the only one she was working on. “Don’t worry about it,” she said to Stella. “I’ll talk to Mr. McCafferty.”

“No one should get by me,” the receptionist said, blinking rapidly.

“You’re right, they shouldn’t,” Kelly agreed, and glared at the uninvited guest. “But, as I said, I need to talk to him, anyway, and I don’t think he’s dangerous.”

“Don’t count on it,” McCafferty countered. Standing near the file cabinet, he looked as if he could spit nails.

The phone rang loudly at Stella’s desk.

“I’ll deal with this,” Kelly said as the receptionist hurried back to her desk and immediately donned her headset.

Kelly closed the door behind her and snapped the blinds shut for privacy, as she didn’t want any of the deputies witnessing the dressing-down that was simmering in the air of her postage-stamp-size office.

“Have a seat,” she offered, sweeping off the files that were stacked in the single chair on the visitor’s side of her metal desk.

He didn’t move, but those eyes followed her as she plopped into her ancient desk chair. “I’m tired of getting the runaround,” he announced through lips that barely moved.

“The runaround?”

“Yep.” He planted his hands between her in-basket and the computer monitor glowing from one corner of the desk and leaned across the reports that were strewn in front of her. “I want answers, dammit. My sister’s been in a coma for over a month because of an accident that I believe is the result of someone running her Jeep off the road, and you people, you people, are doing nothing to find out what happened to her. For all we know someone tried to kill her that day and they won’t stop until they finish the job!”

“That’s just speculation,” Kelly reminded him, the short fuse on her temper igniting. There was a chance that Randi McCafferty’s rig had been forced off the road up in Glacier Park. With no witnesses it was hard to say. But the sheriff’s department was checking into every possibility. “We’re trying to locate another vehicle if one is involved. So far, we haven’t found one.”

“It’s been over a month, for crying out loud,” he said as she sat on the corner of her desk, watching a battery of emotions cross his face. Anger. Determination. Frustration. And more—a fleck of fear darkened his brown eyes. Fear wasn’t an emotion she considered when thinking of any of the roguish, tough-as-rawhide McCafferty men. The three brothers, like their father, had always appeared an intrepid, fearless lot. “And over two weeks have passed since Thorne’s plane went down. You think that was an accident, too?”

“It’s possible. We’re looking into it.”

“Well, you’d better look harder,” he suggested, his nostrils flaring.

The guy was getting to her. Again. He had a way of nettling her—getting under her skin and irritating her. Kind of like a burr caught beneath a horse’s saddle. McCafferty straightened, swept his hat from his head and raked stiff fingers through his near-black, wavy hair. “Before someone actually dies.”

“The feds are involved in the plane crash.”

“That doesn’t seem to be helping a whole helluva lot.”

“We’re doing everything in our power to—”

“It’s not enough,” he cut in. Again fire flared in his eyes. “Are you in charge of this investigation, Detective?” he asked, casting a glance at the badge she wore so proudly. He was crushing the brim of his Stetson in fingers that blanched white at the knuckles.

She held on to her patience, but just barely. “I think we’ve been over this before. Detective Espinoza has been assigned the case. I’m assisting him, as I was the first on the scene of your sister’s wreck.”

“Then I’m wasting my time with you.”

That stung. Kelly gritted her teeth and stood.

“Tell Espinoza I want to talk to him.”

“He’s not in right now.”

“I’ll wait.”

“It might be a while.”

Matt McCafferty looked as if he might explode. He dropped his hat on a nearby folding chair and leaned over her desk again, shoving some file folders out of the way as he pushed his face closer, so that the tip of his nose nearly touched hers. The air seemed to crackle. The smell of wet suede, horses and a faint hint of pine reached her nostrils. Snow had melted on the shoulders of his sheepskin jacket, and there were a few damp spots on his face. His fists opened and closed in frustration on the desktop. “You have to understand, Detective, this is my family we’re talking about,” he said in a low whisper that had more impact than if he’d raged. “My family. Now, the way I see it, my sister was nearly killed, and not only that but she was nine months pregnant at the time.”

“I know—”

“Do you? Can you imagine what she went through? She went into labor when her Jeep careered over that embankment and crashed. She was just lucky someone came along and called 911. Between the paramedics and the doctors over at St. James Hospital and a lot of help from the man upstairs, she pulled through.”

“And the baby survived,” she pointed out, remembering all too clearly the condition of mother and son.

Matt wasn’t about to be deterred. Like a runaway freight train gathering steam, he kept right on. “After a bout of meningitis.”

Her fingers coiled over a pen on the desk. “I understand all this—”

“Fortunately little J.R. is a McCafferty. He’s tough. He pulled through.”

“So he’s fine,” she reminded him, trying to keep emotions out of the conversation, which, of course, was impossible.

“Fine?” He snorted. “I guess you might say so, except that he needs his mom, who is still comatose and lying in a hospital room.” For a brief second Matt McCafferty actually seemed as if he cared about his nephew, and his brown eyes darkened in concern. That got to Kelly, though she refused to show it. Of course he was worried about the kid—McCaffertys always looked after their own. To the exclusion of all others. “And that’s not all, Detective,” he added.

“I’m sure not,” she drawled, and he scowled at her patronizing tone.

“It’s a miracle that Thorne survived the plane crash and ended up with only a few cuts and bruises and a broken leg.”

Amen to that. Thorne was the eldest McCafferty brother, a millionaire oilman who hailed from Denver. He’d been flying the company jet back to Grand Hope, hit bad weather and gone down.

“The way I see it, either the McCaffertys are having one helluva string of bad luck, or someone’s out to get us.”

“Randi was driving and hit an icy patch. Your brother was flying alone in the middle of a snowstorm. Bad luck? Or bad judgment?”

“Or, as I said, a potential murderer on the loose.”

“Who?” she asked, meeting his glare, not backing down an inch though she was beginning to sweat, and the office, filled by his presence, seemed even smaller than usual.

“That’s what I was hopin’ you’d tell me.”

God, he was close to her. Too close. The desk between them seemed a small barrier.

“Believe me, Mr. McCafferty—”

“Matt. Call me Matt. There’re too damned many McCaffertys to call us by our last name.”

She wouldn’t argue that point.

“And somehow I have the feelin’ that you and I, we’ll be workin’ real close together on this one. I intend to stick to you like glue until you find out who the hell is behind this, so we may as well cut the formalities.”

The thought of working closely with anyone named McCafferty stuck in Kelly’s craw, and this one, this damnably sexy, cocksure cowboy, was the most irritating of the lot, but she didn’t have much choice in the matter. “All right, Matt. As I was saying, we’re trying our best here to find out the truth behind both accidents. Everyone in the department is busting their hump to figure this mess out.”

“Not fast enough,” he growled.

“And none of us, me especially—” she hooked a thumb at her chest “—needs anyone looking over her shoulder.” She stuffed the pen in the mug on her desk. “Didn’t you hire your own private detective?”

His thin lips tightened a fraction.

“A man by the name of Kurt Striker?” She folded her arms across her chest.

He nodded. “We thought we needed more help.”

“So what has he got to say?”

“That he thinks there’s foul play,” McCafferty said, his eyes narrowing on Kelly as if he couldn’t quite figure her out. Tough. She was used to men distrusting her as a detective because she was a woman, and that’s what Matt McCafferty was saying; she could read it in his eyes. Well, that was just too damned bad. She wasn’t about to be bullied or intimidated. Not by anyone. Not even one of the high-and-mighty McCaffertys. Matt’s father, John Randall, had once been a rich, powerful and influential man in the county, and his descendants thought they could still throw their collective weights around. Well, not here.

“Has Striker got any proof that someone’s behind the accidents?” she asked.

Hesitation.

“I didn’t think so.” She slipped from the desk. “That’s it. Now, listen, I have work to do, and I don’t need you barging in here and making demands and—”

“Striker says there’s some paint on Randi’s rig. Maroon. Maybe from the other car when she was forced off the road.”

“If she was forced off,” Kelly reminded him. “She could have scraped another vehicle in a parking lot at home in Seattle for all we know. And we already know about the paint, so don’t come in here and insinuate that the department is inefficient or incompetent or any of the above, because we’re just being thorough. Got it?”

“Listen—”

“No, you listen to me, okay?” Her temper was stretched to the breaking point as she stepped around the desk and went toe-to-toe with him. “This force is doing everything in its power to try and find out what happened to your sister and your brother. Everything! We don’t take either accident lightly, believe you me. But we’re not jumping off the deep end here, either. Your sister’s Jeep could have hit ice. It’s just possible she lost control of the vehicle, it slid off the road up in Glacier and she ended up in the hospital in a damned coma. As for your brother, he was taking a big chance with his life flying a small craft in one helluva snowstorm. The engines failed. We’ll determine why. We haven’t yet ruled out foul play. We’re just being careful. The department can’t afford to go off half-cocked and making blind assumptions or accusations.”

“Meanwhile someone might be trying to kill off my family.”

“Who?” she demanded as she rounded the desk again, plopped down in her worn chair and took up her pen. Yanking a yellow legal pad from the credenza behind her, she dropped it on the desk and sat ready, ballpoint pressed against the clean sheet of paper. “Give me a list of suspects, anyone you know who might hold a grudge against the McCafferty clan.”

Matt’s eyes narrowed. “There are dozens.”

“Names, McCafferty, I want names.” She hoped she sounded professional, because he was cutting a little too close to the bone with his damned insinuations.

“You should know a few,” he said, and though she wanted to, she didn’t allow herself to rise to the bait.

“Don’t beat around the bush.”

“Okay, let’s start with your family,” he shot out.

Kelly’s back went up. “No one in my family has any ax to grind with your brother or half sister.” She raised her eyes and met the simmering anger in his.

“Just my dad.”

“Lots of people had problems with him. But he’s gone. And my family aren’t potential murderers, okay? So let’s not even go there.” She bit out the words but wouldn’t give in to the white-hot anger that threatened to take hold of her tongue. The nerve of the man. “Now…” She clicked the pen again. “Who would want to harm your sister, Randi, and your brother Thorne?”

Some of the anger seemed to drain from him. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’m sure Thorne’s made his share of enemies. You don’t get to be a millionaire without someone being envious.”

“Envious enough to try and kill him?” Kelly said.

“Damn, I’d hope not, but…” He closed his eyes for a second. “I don’t know.”

That, at least, sounded honest. “He’s based out of Denver, isn’t he?”

“He was. The corporate headquarters are there.”

“But he’s moving back here and getting married.” It wasn’t a question, but Matt nodded and Kelly noticed the way his dark hair shone under the humming fluorescent lamps. He unbuttoned his jacket, revealing a flannel shirt stretched over a broad chest. Black hairs sprang from the opening at the neck. She tore her eyes away, gave herself a swift mental kick for noticing any part of his male anatomy and scribbled down some notes about Thorne, the oldest of the brothers.

“Yeah, he’s marrying Nicole Stevenson.” Matt managed a half smile that was incredibly and irritatingly sexy. “Lots of people are losing that particular bet.”

Kelly understood. Thorne, like his brothers, had been a confirmed bachelor. He, along with Matt and the youngest brother, Slade, had raised holy hell in high school and cut a wide swath through the local girls. Rich, handsome and smart to the point of arrogance, they’d soon been regarded as the most eligible bachelors in the county and thereby broken more than their share of hearts. Matt, in particular, had earned the reputation of being a ladies’ man. Love ’Em and Leave ’Em McCafferty.

But now it seemed that the first of the invincible and never-to-be-wed brothers was about to fall victim to matrimony. The bride was an emergency room doctor at the local hospital, a single mother with twin girls.

“Okay, so what about your sister?” she asked, trying to keep her mind on business. “Any known enemies?”

Annoyance pulled the smile off of Matt’s cocky jaw. This wasn’t new territory. Ever since the accident, the sheriff’s department had been looking into Randi’s life. “I don’t know,” Matt admitted. “I’m sure she had her share. Hell, she wrote a column for the Seattle Clarion.”

“Advice to the lovelorn?” Kelly filled in.

“More than that. It’s more like general, no-nonsense advice to single people. It’s called—”

“‘Solo.’ I know. I’ve got copies on file,” she said, not admitting that she’d found his sister’s wry outlook on single life interesting and amusing. “But most of the advice she gave was about a single person’s love life.”

“Ironic, wouldn’t you say?” Matt said, walking to the far side of the room and shaking his head. Turning, he leaned his shoulders against a bookcase. “She gave out all this advice—the column was syndicated, picked up by other papers as well—and yet she winds up pregnant and nearly dies behind the wheel and no one even knows who the father of her kid is.”

“I’d call that more than ironic, I’d call it downright odd.” She clicked her pen several times, then motioned to the one empty chair on the far side of her desk. “You could have a seat.”

He eyed the chair just as the phone in her office rang.

“Excuse me.” Lifting the receiver, she said, “Dillinger.”

“Sorry to bother you, but Bob is on the line,” Stella said, still sounding nervous from her failed attempt to keep Matt McCafferty in line.

“I’ll talk with him.” She held up a hand toward Matt as Roberto Espinoza’s voice boomed over the wires. He was out at the Haines farm and was reporting that they’d found Dora, carrying her cat as she trudged through the snow in her housecoat and slippers, following a trail that cut through the woods to a steep slope where, she had explained to Detective Espinoza, her father had taken her sledding as a girl.

“A sad case,” Bob said on a sigh, then added that Dora was now on her way to St. James Hospital by ambulance. The paramedics who had examined her were concerned about exposure, frostbite and senility, which could translate into something deeper. Her husband, Albert, was beside himself. “I’m heading over to St. James myself and I’ll see you when I’m finished there,” Bob added.

“I’ll meet you,” Kelly said, and glanced at the McCafferty brother filling up a good portion of her office. “When you’ve got a minute you might want to speak to Matt McCafferty. He’s here now.” While Matt listened, his expression intense, Kelly explained the concerns of the McCafferty family to her boss.

“Arrogant son of a bitch.” Espinoza let out a whistling breath. “As if we’re not doing everything humanly possible.” She heard the click of a lighter and then a deep sigh. “Tell him to cool his jets. I’ll see him as soon as I’m finished dictating a report on Dora.”

“Will do.” Kelly hung up and relayed the message. “He’ll see you soon. In the meantime you’re supposed to stay cool.”

“Like hell. I’ve been cool way too long and nothing’s being done.”

She let that one slide. As far as Kelly was concerned the meeting was over. She stood and reached for her hat and coat, then flipped open the blinds. “I’ve got work to do, McCafferty. Detective Espinoza said he’d call you and he will.” She opened the door and stood, silently inviting him to leave. “Got it?”

“If that’s the best you can do—”

“It is.”

He crammed his Stetson onto his head and threw her a look that told her she wasn’t about to see the last of him, then she watched as he swung out of her office, past Stella’s desk and through the creaking gate. His jeans had seen better days and they’d faded over his buttocks, it seemed, from the glimpse she caught at the hemline of his jacket. He didn’t bother with the buttons or gloves; he was probably overheated from the anger she and Bob Espinoza had fired in him. Well, that was just too damned bad.

He shouldered open the door and again a blast of air as cold as the North Pole rushed into the room. Then he was gone, the glass door swinging shut behind him. “And good riddance,” Kelly muttered under her breath, irritated that she found him the least little bit attractive and noticing that Stella had forgone answering the telephones or typing at her computer keyboard to watch Matt’s stormy exit.

Yep, Kelly thought, squaring her hat on her head and sliding her arms through the sleeves of her insulated jacket. The man was bad news.

CHAPTER TWO

Matt drummed his fingers on the steering wheel of his truck. Snow was blowing across the highway, drifting against the fence line and melting on his windshield. He flipped on the wipers and switched the radio to a local country station, searching for a weather report and settling for a Willie Nelson classic.

Squinting against the ever-increasing flakes, he scowled as he headed out of town toward the Flying M Ranch. Maybe he’d made a mistake, driving like the devil was on his back into town and barreling into the sheriff’s department demanding answers.

He hadn’t gotten squat.

In fact that red-haired detective had put him in his place. Time and time again. It was unsettling. Infuriating. Downright insulting. Kelly Dillinger had a way of bothering him more than she had the right to. And he couldn’t get her out of his mind. Her skin was pale, her eyes a deep chocolate brown, her hair a bright, vibrant red which, in his estimation, accounted for her temperament. Redheads were always a fiery, hot-tempered lot. Then there was her no-nonsense, I-won’t-deal-with-any-bull attitude. Like she was a man, for God’s sake. That would be the day. Her build was basically athletic, but definitely female. He’d noticed, and kicked himself for it. Her uniform had stretched tight over her breasts and hugged her waist and hips. The woman had curves, damned nice curves, even if she tried her best to conceal them.

He’d always heard that women were attracted to men in uniforms, but he damned well didn’t expect it to work in reverse. Especially not with him. Nope. He liked soft, well-rounded women who reveled in and showed off their feminine attributes. He was partial to tight T-shirts, miniskirts or long dresses with split skirts, open enough to show a good long length of calf and thigh. He’d seen slacks and silk blouses that were sexy, but never a uniform, for crying out loud, and especially not one of those from the local sheriff’s department, but he’d noticed Kelly Dillinger. Angry as he’d been when he’d stormed into the sheriff’s department, he’d found it damned hard to keep his mind on business.

But then he’d always had trouble with his libido; around attractive women it had always been in overdrive. Tonight was worse than it had been in a long, long while.

So there it was. He was attracted to her.

But he couldn’t be. No way. Not to a woman cop—especially not this one who was working on his sister’s case and who, he knew, held a personal grudge against the McCafferty family. But the bare facts of the matter were that he was lying to himself. Even now, just thinking about her, he felt his crotch tighten. He glanced at his reflection in the rearview mirror. “Idiot,” he chastised, then shifted down as he approached the Flying M, the ranch that had been his father’s pride and joy.

“Great,” he grumbled as he cranked the steering wheel and his tires spun a little as they hit a patch of packed snow. The woman was off limits. Period. If for no other reason than she lived here in Grand Hope, far from his own ranch. If he was going to be looking for a woman, which he wasn’t, he reminded himself, he’d be looking for one a lot closer to home. God, where did those thoughts come from? He didn’t want or need a woman. They were too much trouble. Kelly Dillinger included.

His headlights caught the snowflakes dancing in front of the truck and a few dry weeds poked through the mantle of white, scraping against the undercarriage as he navigated along the twin ruts leading to the heart of the spread. A few shaggy-coated cattle, dark, shifting shapes against the white background of the snow, were visible, but most of the herd had sought shelter or was out of his line of vision as he plowed down a long lane and rounded a final bend to a broad, flat parking area located between the main house and the outbuildings.

The truck slid to a stop beneath a leafless apple tree near a fence that was beginning to sag in a spot or two.

Matt yanked his keys from the ignition, threw open the door and was across the lot and up the three steps of the front porch in seconds. He only stopped to kick some of the snow off his boots, then pushed open the front door.

A wave of warm heat and the sound of piano keys tinkling out a quick, melodic tune greeted him. He sloughed off his jacket and felt his stomach rumble as he smelled roasting chicken and something else—cinnamon and baked apples. Hanging his jacket and hat on a peg near the front door, he heard the quick, light-footed steps of tiny feet scurrying across the hardwood floor overhead. Within seconds the twins were scuttling down the stairs.

“Unca Matt!” one little dark-haired cherub sang out as she rounded the corner of the landing and flew down the rest of the worn steps.

“How’re ya, Molly girl?” Crouching, opening his arms wide, he swept the impish four-year-old off her feet.

“Fine,” she said, her brown eyes twinkling at a sudden and uncharacteristic hint of shyness. She sucked on a finger as her sister, blanket in tow, scampered down the steps.

“And how about you, Mindy?” he asked, bending down and hauling the second scamp into his arms. The music was still playing and so he dipped and swooped, dancing with a niece in each arm. He’d only known the little girls over a month, but they, along with Randi’s baby, were a part of his family, now and forever. He couldn’t imagine a life without Molly, Mindy or the baby.

The girls giggled and laughed, Mindy’s tattered blanket twirling as Matt sashayed them into the living room where their mother, Nicole, was seated on the piano stool, her fingers flying over the keys as she played some ragtime piece for all it was worth.

“Is Liberace playing?” Matt asked.

“No!” the girls chimed, throwing back their heads and giggling loudly.

“Oh, you’re right. It must be Elton John?”

“No, no!” They screamed in unison, their little noses wrinkling. “It’s Mommy.”

“And she’s a hack,” their mother said, twirling around as the final notes faded and the sound of the fire crackling in the grate caught Matt’s attention. Nicole’s daughters wiggled out of his arms and scrambled to their mother. “But then, you’re not exactly Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly.”

“Oh, damn, and I thought I was.” Matt walked to the fireplace and warmed the back of his legs against the flames. “I’m crushed.”

“That’ll be the day.” Nicole shook her head, her amber eyes bright with mischief.

Harold was lying in his favorite spot on the rug near the fire. He lifted up his head and yawned, stretching his legs before he perked up one ear and snorted, looked as if he might climb to his feet, but didn’t bother and let his snout rest upon his paws again.

“Well? What did you find out?” Thorne, on crutches, hitched his way into the room and plopped into the worn leather recliner where he propped up his injured leg. He was wearing baggy khaki pants that covered up the cast running from foot to thigh, and his expression said more clearly than words, “I’m tired of being laid up.”

“Nothing. The damned sheriff’s department doesn’t know diddly-squat.”

“You talked to Espinoza?” Thorne asked.

Boots pounded from the back of the house, heralding the arrival of their youngest brother.

“Wait a minute!” Juanita’s voice echoed through the hallways. “You take off those boots! I just mopped the floor. Dios! Does anyone ever listen to me? No!”

“Hey!” Slade appeared in the archway separating the living room from the foyer and staircase. He didn’t bother to answer Juanita, nor did he shed his coat. “Where the hell have you been?” Black eyebrows were slammed together over intense, laser-blue eyes as he stared at Matt. “We’ve got stock to feed, and Thorne’s not a helluva lot of help these days.”

“Cool it.” Thorne’s gaze moved from his youngest brother to Nicole’s daughters who, if they’d heard the swearing, were too busy banging on the piano keys to notice. “Matt was down at the sheriff’s office.”

“They found anything?” Slade asked, his belligerence fading as he walked to the liquor cabinet set into the bookcase and unearthed an old bottle of Scotch. “How ’bout a drink?”

“No, they don’t know anything else and yeah, I could use a shot.” Matt couldn’t hide his irritation that he hadn’t gotten more definitive answers.

“None for me.” Thorne shook his head. “What did Espinoza have to say?”

“He wasn’t around. I talked with the woman.”

“Kelly Dillinger,” Nicole said as the twins, bored with making their own kind of music, climbed down from her lap and hurried out of the room. A tall woman with brown hair, a sharp wit and a medical degree, Nicole Stevenson was more than a match for his brother. She was smart, savvy, and as an emergency room physician, wasn’t used to taking orders from anyone—just the kind of woman to tame Thorne and settle him down.

“She’s the one.” Matt accepted a short glass from Slade, took a swallow and felt the warm fire of liquor burn a welcome path down his throat. And he shoved any wayward thoughts of Detective Dillinger from his mind. It wasn’t easy. In fact it was damned near impossible. That fiery redhead had a way of catching a man’s attention. Big time.

“A drink?” Slade asked Nicole as he poured another glass.

“I’d better take a rain check. I’m scheduled at the hospital later,” she said, and as her words faded she froze and cocked her head. “Uh-oh, it sounds like someone’s waking up.”

Matt heard the first cough of a baby’s cry, and he was amazed at how women seemed to have a sixth sense about that sort of thing.

“I’ll get him,” Nicole said, then turned her head and looked over her shoulder at Thorne. One sleek eyebrow rose as she added, “but you uncles are going to be pulling duty later this evening.”

“We can handle it,” Thorne said, as if a baby were no problem at all. But then Thorne thought he could handle the world. And he wasn’t too far off.

“Yeah. Right.” Nicole wasn’t buying her fiancé’s confident routine. She climbed the stairs to the nursery, and her laughter drowned out the baby’s fussy noises.

“So what did the detective say?” Thorne asked Matt as he pushed the recliner into a more upright position.

“Same old runaround. They’re looking into all possibilities. They have no evidence of foul play. There are no suspects. When Randi wakes up, then maybe they’ll be able to piece more of it together. All a load of bull if you ask me.” He downed his drink, irritated all over again. The heat from the fire felt good against the back of his legs, the liquor warmed him on the inside, but he was restless, anxious, needed to take action. He’d been staying at the Flying M for nearly a month, ever since he’d been called and told about his half sister’s accident. He’d driven like a madman, camped out and done what he could, but he was frustrated as hell because he felt like he was spinning his wheels. He had his own place to run, his ranch near the Idaho border. His neighbor, Mike Kavanaugh, was looking after the place while he was gone and had hired a couple of high school boys to help out, but Matt was beginning to feel the need to go back and check on the ranch himself.

“Detective Dillinger is a looker, if ya ask me,” Slade offered up as he took a swallow from his drink.

“No one did,” Matt grumbled.

Slade’s chuckle was deep and wicked, and Matt caught the teasing glint in his brother’s blue eyes. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

Matt snorted. Lifted a shoulder.

“Come on, admit it.” Slade wasn’t about to give up. “You’ve always had an eye for the ladies.”

“It takes one to know one.”

“Enough,” Thorne said just as Nicole returned toting the baby. Matt’s heart melted at the sight of little J.R., the name the brothers had come up with since Randi was still in a coma, didn’t even know she had a son. They figured they could call him Junior or John Randall, like the kid’s grandfather. As he had dozens of times, Matt wondered about the baby’s father. Who was the guy? Where the hell was he? Why hadn’t Randi ever mentioned him?

Matt felt a slash of guilt. The truth of the matter was that he, and the rest of his brothers, had been so caught up in their own lives, they’d lost touch with their half sister, a firebrand of a girl who, for years, had been the bane of her older siblings’ existence, the daughter of the woman whom they blamed for wrecking their parents’ marriage.

Now, looking down at the baby, his downy reddish-gold hair sticking up at odd angles, Matt felt a bit of pride and something more—something deeper, something that scared him, as it spoke to the need for roots, and settling down and marriage and children of his own.

Nicole handed the bundle to the man she intended to marry. “Here, Uncle Thorne, you deal with J.R. while I see if Juanita needs some help with dinner.”

“Me, too. I help,” Molly offered, dashing into the room only to take a spin around her mother and race off toward the kitchen.

“How about you?” Nicole asked Mindy, who was tailing after her more exuberant sister.

“Yeth. Me, too.”

“Come on, then,” she said, casting one final glance at her soon-to-be husband and shepherding the girls down the hallway. Harold gave up a disgruntled “woof” and slapped his tail onto the braided rug. Matt swallowed a smile at the sight of his eldest brother—millionaire, CEO of McCafferty International, heretofore international jet-setter and playboy—reduced to juggling a one-month-old infant in his awkward hands while propping up his broken leg.

“Hey, I could use some help here,” Thorne grumbled, though he grinned down at the baby.

“Didn’t you say something about feeding the stock?” Matt asked Slade.

“That I did.” The two younger McCaffertys left Thorne in charge of the infant. Matt thought it was only fitting as he snagged his jacket from the peg near the front door and stepped outside into the frigid air. Seeing as Thorne couldn’t help out much with the heavy work around the ranch, he could damned well babysit.

* * *

The woman in the hospital bed looked horrible, though by all accounts she was healing. Nevertheless, in Kelly’s estimation Randi McCafferty had a long way to go. There were tubes and monitors running into and out of her body and she lay on the bed unmoving, thin and pale, her skin still showing some signs of discoloration, though some of the bruises and cuts had healed.

“If only you could talk,” Kelly said, biting her lower lip. For all the pain the McCaffertys had put on her family, Kelly still didn’t like seeing anyone like this. A nurse walked to Randi’s bedside and began taking her vital signs. “Has she shown any sign of waking?” Kelly asked.

“I can’t really say,” sighed the petite woman with shiny black hair, olive skin, eyes rimmed with excessive mascara and a name tag that read Kathy Desmond. “With this one, we might need a crystal ball,” she joked as she picked up Randi’s wrist and took her pulse, then slipped a blood pressure cuff over her arm. “It seems to me that she should wake up soon. Certainly she’s had plenty of eye movement beneath her lids, she’s yawned, and one of the night nurses thinks she moved her arm. Whether this means she’ll be waking up today, tomorrow or next week, I don’t know.”

“But soon.”

“I would think.” The nurse’s highly arched brows pulled together. “But I’m not sure.”

“I understand,” Kelly said, wishing Matt McCafferty’s half sister would rouse and open her eyes, be cognizant and clearheaded enough to answer questions about the day her car slid off the road. Had someone intentionally forced her over the embankment? Had she gone into labor and lost control? Had she just hit a patch of black ice that sent her vehicle into a skid? The McCafferty brothers seemed to think there was some person or persons behind the accident. Kelly wasn’t convinced. Right now only Randi McCafferty had the answers to what had happened up at Glacier Park and only she knew who was the father of her child.

The nurse left the room and Kelly stepped closer to the unmoving form on the bed. She wrapped her fingers around the cool metal rails, then touched the back of Randi’s hand, willing some life into Randi’s battered body. “Wake up,” she urged. “You’ve got so much to live for…a new baby, for starters.” And three stubborn, intense half brothers.

“Besides that you’ve got a lot of explaining to do when you wake up.” She squeezed Randi’s hand, but there was no response. “Come on, Randi. Help me out here.”

“She can’t hear you.”

Kelly released the comatose woman’s hand quickly and flushed. She recognized Matt McCafferty’s voice instantly. Her heart jumped.

“I realize that.” Turning, she found him in the doorway, still dressed in the jeans and shirt he’d had on a few hours earlier. His jacket was unbuttoned, his hat in his hands, his face not as hostile as it had been earlier, but there were still silent accusations in his dark eyes. Roguishly handsome and mad as a wet hornet.

“What’re you doing here?” he demanded.

“I met Detective Espinoza in the ER, then decided to check on your sister.”

“You should be checking out leads, trying to find the bastard who did this to her.” Matt stepped into the room, closer. Kelly’s nerves tightened and she silently chided herself for her reaction.

He stared down at his sister, and the play of emotions across his bladed features showed signs of a deeper emotion than she would have expected from the rogue cowboy, who had become, according to town gossip, a solitary man. Yes, there was anger in the set of his jaw, quiet determination in his stance, but something else was evident—the flicker of guilt deep in his near-black eyes. At some level Matt McCafferty felt responsible for his sister’s condition. He reached over the rails just as Kelly had minutes before and took Randi’s small, pale hand in his big, tanned fingers. “You hang in there,” he said huskily, his thumb rubbing the back of his sister’s hand, only to stop less than an inch from the spot where the IV needle was buried in her skin.

Kelly’s throat tightened as she recognized his pain.

“Your little man, J.R., he’s needin’ ya.” Matt cleared his throat, slid an embarrassed glance at Kelly, then turned his attention back to his sister. Obviously he felt more comfortable shoeing horses, mending fence or roping calves than he did trying to come up with words of encouragement to a comatose sibling. And yet he tried. Kelly’s heart twisted. Maybe there was more to Matt McCafferty than first met the eye, than rumor allowed. “And the rest of us, we need ya, too,” he added gruffly. With a final pat to his kid sister’s shoulder, he turned on his heel.

Kelly let her breath out slowly. Who was this man and why did she react to him—dear Lord, her hands were sweating, and if she didn’t know better, she’d swear her heartbeat accelerated whenever she saw him. But that was crazy. Just plain nuts.

Giving herself a quick mental shake, Kelly followed him through the door into the central hallway to the hub that housed the nurses’ station.

“Where’s Espinoza?” he asked, sliding a glance her way.

“Probably back at the office. He finished up here on another case, but he’s aware that you’re concerned. He’ll call you tonight, but I don’t think he can give you any more information than I have.”

“Damn.” They walked to the elevator and stepped into a waiting car. She ignored the fact that her pulse had accelerated, and she noticed that he smelled faintly of leather and soap. As the doors to the elevator shut and they were alone, his dark eyes focused on her. Hard. She wanted to squirm away from his intense, silently accusing eyes. Instead she stood her ground as he asked, “So why were you in Randi’s room?”

“Just to keep my focus. I hadn’t seen her for a while and after your visit this afternoon, I thought I’d see how she was getting along. I’ve kept in contact with the hospital, of course, gotten updates, but I thought seeing her might make me clearer on some points.”

“Such as?”

“Such as why was she up in Glacier Park? Where was she going? Who were her enemies? Who were her friends? Why did she fire the foreman of the ranch a week or so before she left Seattle? What happened at her job? Who’s the father of her child? Those kind of questions.”

“Get any answers?” he asked sarcastically.

“I was hoping someone in the family might know.”

“I wish. No one does.” He leaned against the rail surrounding the interior as the elevator car landed and the doors opened to the lobby. He straightened, his jacketed arm brushing hers. She stepped out of the car, ignored the faint physical contact. “What do you know about a book your sister was writing?”

“I’m not sure there is one,” he said as they crossed a carpeted reception area where wood-framed chairs were scattered around tables strewn with magazines and a few potted trees had been added to give some illusion that St. James Hospital was more than a medical facility, warmer than an institution.

“Your housekeeper, Juanita Ramirez, said she was in contact with your sister before the accident and that Randi had been working on a book of some kind, but no one seems to know anything more about it.”

“Juanita didn’t even know that Randi was pregnant. I doubt if she was privy to my sister’s secrets,” Matt muttered as he made his way to the wide glass doors of the main entrance.

“Why would she make it up?”

“I’m not saying Juanita’s lying.” The first set of doors opened automatically, and as Kelly stepped into the vestibule, she felt the temperature lower ten or fifteen degrees. Thank God. For some reason she was sweating.

“But maybe Randi fibbed. She’d talked about writing a book since she was a kid in high school, but did she ever? No. Not that my brothers or I ever heard of.”

The second set of doors opened and a middle-aged man pushed a wheelchair, where a tiny elderly woman was huddled in a wool coat, stocking cap and lap blankets. Outside the snow was falling, flakes dancing and swirling in the pale blue illumination from the security lamps.

Matt squared his hat on his head, the brim shadowing his face even further. “Talk to anyone and sooner or later they tell you about the book they’re gonna write someday. Trouble is that ‘someday’ never comes.”

“Spoken like a true cynic,” Kelly observed as she buttoned her coat and felt the chill of Montana winter slap her face and cool her blood, which seemed a few degrees higher than normal.

“Just a reality check. If Randi was writing a book, don’t you think one of us, either Thorne, Slade or I, would know about it?”

“Just like you knew all about her job and her pregnancy,” Kelly threw back at him, using the same argument he’d given her earlier about the housekeeper’s belief that Randi had penned some literary tome.

Matt was about to step off the curb, but stopped and turned to face Kelly. “Okay, okay, but even so. Big deal. So what if she was writing her goddamned version of War And Peace? What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China, or more specifically what happened to her up in Glacier Park?”

“You tell me.”

“You’re the cop,” he pointed out, his eyes flaring angrily. “A detective, no less. This is your job, lady.”

“And I’m just trying to do it.”

“Then try a little harder, okay? My sister’s life is on the line.” With that he stepped off the curb, hunched his shoulders against the wind and strode through the blowing snow to his truck. Kelly was left with her cheeks burning hot, her temper in the stratosphere, her pride taking a serious blow.

“Bastard,” she growled under her breath, and headed to her own car, an unmarked four-wheel drive. She didn’t know who she was more angry with, the hard-edged cowboy, or herself for her reaction to him. What was wrong with her? She was nervous around him, nearly tongue-tied, so…unprofessional! Well, that was going to change, and now!

Once behind the wheel, she twisted on the ignition, flipped on the wipers and drove to her town house on the west end of town. With a western facade, the two-storied row house had been her home for three years, ever since she’d scraped up enough of a down payment to buy her own place.

She parked in the single garage and climbed up a flight to the main floor, where she kicked off her boots in the tiny laundry room, then padded inside. Tossing her keys onto the glass-topped table that served as her eating area and desk, she walked into the kitchen and hit the play button on her answering machine while shedding her coat.

“Kelly?” her sister’s voice called frantically, bringing a smile to Kelly’s lips as her sibling was nothing if not overly dramatic. “It’s Karla and I was hoping to catch you. Look, it’s about six and I’m still at the shop, but I’m gonna close up soon and pick up the kids at the sitter’s then run out to Mom and Dad’s. I thought maybe you could meet me there…call me at the shop or try and reach me out at their place.”

Kelly checked the wall clock and saw that it was nearly seven-thirty. There were no other messages so she placed a call to her folks’ house and Karla picked up on the second ring.

“Got your message,” Kelly said.

“Kelly, great! Mom just pulled this fantastic pork roast from the oven, and from the smell of it, it’s to die for.”

Kelly’s stomach rumbled and she realized she hadn’t eaten anything since the carton of yogurt and muffin that had sufficed as lunch.

“We were hoping you could join us.”

With a glance at the paperwork on the table, Kelly weighed the options. She wanted to go over every ounce of information she could on Randi McCafferty, but she figured she could wedge in some time for her family first. “Just give me a few minutes to change. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

“Make it twenty minutes, will ya? My kids are starved and when they get hungry, they get cranky.”

“Do not,” one of the boys countered, his high voice audible.

“Just hurry,” Karla pleaded. “The natives are restless.”

“I’ll be there in a flash.”

“Good idea. Put on the lights and siren, clear out traffic and roar on over.”

“I’ll see ya.” Kelly whipped off her uniform and changed into soft, well-worn jeans and her favorite cowl-necked sweater. She took half a minute to run a brush through her hair, then threw on a long coat and boots and dived into her old Nissan, a relic that she loved. Fifteen years old, a hundred and eighty thousand miles on the odometer and never once had the compact left her stranded. At a stoplight, she applied a fresh sheen of lipstick but still made it to her parents’ house, the bungalow where she’d grown up, in fifteen minutes flat.

“Kelly girl!” her father called as he pushed his wheelchair into the dining room where the table was already set. Once tall and strapping, Ron Dillinger had been reduced to using the chair for twenty-five years, the result of a bullet that had lodged in his back and damaged his spinal cord. He’d been a deputy at the time, and had been on disability ever since. “Glad you could join us.”

“Me, too, Dad,” she said, and bent down to kiss his forehead where thin strands of white hair couldn’t quite cover his speckled pate.

“You’ve been busy, I see,” he said, holding up a folded newspaper. “Lots going on.”

“Always.”

“That’s the way I remember it. Even in my day, there weren’t enough men on the force.”

“Or women.”

Ronald snorted. “Weren’t any women at all.”

“Maybe that’s why you weren’t so efficient,” she teased, and he swatted at her with his newspaper. She ducked into the kitchen and was greeted with squeals of delight from her nephews, Aaron and Spencer, two dynamos who rarely seemed to wind down.

The boys charged her, nearly toppling their mother in the process. “Aunt Kelly!” Aaron cried. “Up, up.” He held up chubby three-year-old arms and Kelly obligingly lifted him from the floor. He had a mashed sandwich in one hand and a tiny toy truck in the other. Peanut butter was smeared across the lower half of his face. “You comed.”

“That I did.”

“Came, she came,” Karla corrected him.

“You’re such a baby,” Spencer needled.

“Am not!” Aaron rose to the bait as quickly as a hungry trout to a salmon fly.

“Of course you’re not,” Kelly said, swinging him to the ground and wondering just how much peanut butter was transferred to her sweater. “And neither are you,” she said to her older nephew, who grinned, showing off the gap where once had been two front teeth. Freckled, blue-eyed and smart as a whip, Spencer enjoyed besting his younger sibling, a half brother. Karla, two years younger than Kelly, had been married twice, divorced as many times, and had sworn off men and marriage for good.

“Here, you can mash the potatoes,” Karla said as she snatched a wet dishrag from the sink and started after a squealing Aaron, who took off into the dining room.

“Papa!” Aaron cried, hoping his grandfather would protect him from his mother’s obsession with cleanliness.

“He won’t save you,” Karla said, chasing after her youngest.

Kelly’s mother, Eva, was adding a dab of butter and a sprinkle of brown sugar to already-baked acorn squash. The scents of roast pork, herbs and her mother’s favorite perfume mingled and rose in the warmth of the kitchen as she shook her head at the melee. “Never a dull minute when the boys are around.”

“I see that.” Kelly rumpled Spencer’s hair fondly, cringed at the wail coming from the dining room, then rinsed her hands and found the electric beaters so that she could whip the potatoes. Over the whir of the hand mixer, Aaron’s screams, the microwave timer and comments from Charlie, her parents’ pet budgie, who was perched in his cage near the front door, Kelly could barely hear herself think.

“I’ll make the gravy,” Karla said as she tossed the dirty rag into the sink.

“Mission accomplished?” Kelly glanced down at a more subdued Aaron. His face was clean again, red from being rubbed by the washcloth.

“Yeah, and it’ll last all of five minutes. If we’re lucky.”

Kelly’s mother chuckled. A petite woman with fluffy apricot curls and a porcelain complexion, she doted on her two grandsons as if they were truly God’s gifts, which, Kelly imagined, they were. It was just too bad they had such louses for fathers. Seth Kramer and Franklin Anderson were as different as night and day—their only common trait being that they couldn’t handle the responsibilities of fatherhood.

“Are we about ready?” Eva asked, and Kelly clicked off the beaters.

“I think so.”

It took another five minutes to carry everything into the dining room, find a booster chair for Aaron, get both boys settled and served up, but soon Kelly was cutting into a succulent slab of herb-seasoned pork. She finally relaxed a little, the tension in her shoulders easing as they ate and talked, just as they had growing up. Except there were two more chairs crowded around the Formica-topped table now, for two boys who were as dear to her as if they’d been Kelly’s own.

“So what gives with all that business with the McCaffertys?” her father asked around a mouthful of pork. “I read in the paper there’s speculation about foul play.”

“Isn’t there always?” Kelly asked.

“With that group there is.” Eva’s eyebrows pulled together, causing little lines to deepen between them.

“Yeah, they’re an untrustworthy lot, there’s no doubt of that.”

“Amen,” Karla said as she cut tiny pieces of meat for her youngest son.

Kelly didn’t comment. For years the name McCafferty had been tantamount to Beelzebub or Lucifer in the Dillinger home. She saw her mother give off a soft little sigh as Eva poured gravy onto her potatoes. “I suppose it’s all water under the bridge,” she said softly, but the pain of the old betrayal was still evident in the lines of her face.

Ron scowled into his plate. “Maybe so, but it doesn’t mean I have to like ’em.”

“John Randall is dead.”

“And I hope he rots in his grave.”

“Dad!” Karla said sharply, then glanced pointedly at her sons.

“Well, I do. No reason to sugarcoat it. That son of a bitch didn’t care a whit about anyone but his own kin. It didn’t matter how many years your mother put in working for him, passing up other good jobs, he still cut her loose when times got a little rocky. And what happened to her pension, huh? There wasn’t any, that’s what happened. Bad investments, or some such crock of—”

“Dad!” Karla said again.

“Karla’s right. There’s no use discussing it in front of the boys,” Eva agreed, but the sparkle in her eyes had faded. “Now, if you’ll pass me the pepper…”

And so the subject was gratefully closed for the duration of the meal. Their father even found his smile again over a piece of his wife’s lemon meringue pie.

After the plates had been cleared and the dishwasher was humming with a full load, Ron challenged the boys to a game of checkers on a small table near the fire. Aaron climbed onto his grandfather’s lap and they played as a team against Spencer, who thought he could beat them both as he’d practiced how to outmaneuver an opponent on a computer.

“The boys could really use a father figure,” Karla observed, watching her sons relate to their grandfather as she fished in the closet for her sons’ coats and hats. Sadly, she ran a hand through her spiky strawberry-blond hair. “All they’ve got is Dad.”

“They do have fathers,” Kelly reminded her.

Karla rolled her expressive green eyes. “Oh, give me a break. They have sperm donors, nothing else. Boy, can I pick ’em. Some people are athletically challenged, I’m love challenged.”

“You and the rest of the women on the planet.”

“I’m not kidding. I can see when anyone else is making a mistake, but I seem to have blinders on when it comes to my choice in men.”

“Or rose-colored glasses.”

“Yeah, those, too.” She was pensive, running long fingers along the stitching in Aaron’s stocking cap. “But then you never take a chance, Kelly. I mean, not on love. You take lots of chances in your career.”

“Maybe I’ve been too busy.”

“Or maybe you’re just smarter than I am,” Karla said with a sigh. “I don’t see you making the same mistakes I did.”

“You forget I’m a career woman,” Kelly said, reaching for her coat. “A cop.”

“So am I—a career woman, that is—and don’t tell me that being a beautician and owning your own shop doesn’t count.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Kelly said, laughing.

“So…when are you going to tuck your badge away long enough to fall in love?”

“As soon as you put down the perm rollers, shampoo and clippers.”

“Very funny.”

“I thought so.” She slipped her arms through the sleeves of her coat, hiked it up over her shoulders and began working on the buttons.

“I think we both could take some advice from Randi McCafferty. You know she wrote a column for single people?” Karla asked, then added, “Of course you do—what was I thinking? You’ve been working on the case for weeks.” She held up Spencer’s coat, then called toward the living room. “Come on, boys. Time to go.” Both kids protested and Karla said to Kelly, “I was only kidding about Randi McCafferty’s column. The last person I would take any advice from is a McCafferty.”

“Maybe they’re not all as bad as we think,” Kelly said as she reached into her pocket for her keys.

“Oh, yeah? So now they’re sprouting wings and halos?” Karla shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

There was a whoop from the living room as Spencer actually beat Aaron and his grandfather. Aaron burst into tears, and from the twinkle in Ron Dillinger’s eyes, Kelly was certain he’d let his eldest grandson win.

“Come on, boys, time to go,” Karla called again. In an aside to Kelly, she added, “Getting them out of here is like pulling teeth.”

“No!” Aaron cried, refusing to budge from his grandfather’s lap while Spencer just ignored his mother, no matter what tack she took. Eventually she wrestled her youngest into his ski coat, hat and mittens while Spencer, lower lip protruding in an exaggerated pout, shrugged into a quilted pullover with a hood.

“You boys be good, now,” Eva said as she emerged from the kitchen without her apron. She planted a kiss on each boy’s cheek and slipped them each a tiny candy bar left over from Halloween into their hands.

“I be good!” Aaron said, trying to tear off his mittens to get at the bit of chocolate.

“Mom!” Karla admonished.

“I just can’t help myself.”

“Here, let me get it.” Kelly unwrapped the chocolate morsel, then plopped it into Aaron’s open mouth.

“He’s like one of those nestlings you see on the nature shows,” Karla grumbled good-naturedly. “Aren’t ya, little eaglet?”

Aaron grinned and chocolate drooled down his chin.

“I’ve got to get out of here. Come on, Spence.” With that she bustled out the door, leaving Kelly to say goodbye to her parents.

“Everything good with you?” her father asked, worry in his dark eyes as he rolled his wheelchair into the foyer.

“Couldn’t be better.”

“But the boys on the force, they’re not giving you any trouble?”

“None that I don’t deserve, Dad. This isn’t the 1940s, you know. There are thousands of female cops these days.”

“I know, I know, but it just doesn’t seem like a job for a woman.” He held up his hands as if warding off the verbal blow he was certain was heading his way. “No offense.”

“Oh, none taken, Dad, none at all. You’ve just denigrated every woman police officer I know, but am I offended? Oh, no-o-o. Not me.”

“Fine, fine, you’ve made your point,” he said with a chuckle. “Just don’t let anyone give you a bad time. None of the boys you work with and especially none of the McCaffertys.”

“Can’t we just forget about them?” Eva asked.

“Impossible.” He cranked the wheelchair into the living room and returned with a copy of the Grand Hope Gazette, folded to display an article on the third page of the main section, an article about Thorne McCafferty’s small plane crash. “And this is after a couple of weeks have passed.” He skimmed the article. “Seems as if there’s some question as to whether or not there was foul play involved, and this here reporter thinks maybe the plane crash and the sister’s wreck might be related. Bah. Sounds like coincidence to me.” He glanced up at Kelly, his bristly white eyebrows elevated, inviting her opinion.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss the case.”

“Oh, cut the crap, Kelly. We’re family.”

“And I’ll confide in you when I need to, okay? Now…I’ve got to run. Duty calls.”

She bussed each of her parents on the cheeks, then hurried outside to her car. The snow had stopped falling, but because of the dark clouds, she couldn’t see a solitary star in the dark heavens. Her breath fogged in the air, her windshield was frozen, and she shivered as she cranked on the ignition.

Like clockwork, the engine fired and she drove away from the warm little bungalow with its patches of golden light and wide front porch. Her parents were aging, more rapidly as the days went by. Her father had never been his robust self after the gunshot blast that had ruined his career and crippled him for life, and her mother, strong woman that she was, had never complained, had taken care of a convalescing, depressed husband and two young daughters. She’d landed a job with John Randall McCafferty as his personal secretary to help make ends meet. John Randall had promised her raises, promotions, bonuses and a retirement plan, but his fortunes had changed, and after his second divorce and a downturn in the economy, he’d been left with nothing but the ranch. Eva had lost her job and all the promises of a substantial nest egg had proved to be empty, the money that was supposed to have been set aside dwindled away by bad investments—oil wells that had run dry, silver mines that had never produced, stock in start-up companies that had shut down within months of opening their doors.

There had been talk of a lawsuit, but Eva hadn’t been able to find a local attorney ready to take on a man who had once been a political contender in the area, a man who had been influential and still had connections to judges, the mayor and even a senator or two.

“Don’t dwell on it,” Kelly told herself. She drove across the town where she’d grown up, wheeled into the parking lot of her row house and used the remote to open her garage door.

Though there hadn’t been a lot of money in her family, she’d grown up with security and love from both her parents. That was probably more than any of the McCafferty children could say. She climbed up the stairs to her bedroom on the upper floor, changed into her flannel pajamas and a robe, then made herself a cup of decaf coffee and sat at the kitchen table, scouring the notes she’d taken on Randi McCafferty’s accident and Thorne McCafferty’s plane crash.

So many questions swirled around John Randall’s only daughter and no one, it seemed, could come up with the answers. Kelly had interviewed all the brothers, everyone who worked on the Flying M Ranch, all of Randi McCafferty’s friends in the area. All the while she’d kept in contact with the Seattle police, who had handled interviewing Randi’s friends and associates there, in the city where Randi had lived and worked. It wasn’t usual procedure, but this case was different with Randi being pregnant, giving birth, then lying comatose in the hospital, her half brothers crying foul play.

But until Randi McCafferty came out of the coma, the mystery shrouding the youngest of John Randall’s children would most likely remain unsolved.

Kelly glanced down at the notes she’d taken and two questions loomed larger than the others. First and foremost, who was the father of Randi’s son, and second, was she writing a book and what was it about?

Doodling as she sipped her coffee, she thought about the case, then, as a headache began to cloud her mind, she finished her coffee and leaned back in her chair. In her mind’s eye she saw Matt McCafferty as he had been at the office and later in the hospital. Chiseled features, dark eyes, square jaw and hard, ranch-tough body. He came on like gang busters, looking as if he was ready to spit nails, but there was more to him, deeper emotions she’d witnessed herself as he’d stood over his sister’s bedside. Feelings he’d tried to hide had crossed his features. Guilt. Worry. Fear.

Yes, she decided, there was more to Cowboy Matt than met the eye.

She stretched and yawned, scraped her chair back and started for the bedroom when the phone jangled loudly. She picked it up on the extension near the bed and glanced at the clock. Eleven forty-seven. “Hello?” she said into the receiver, knowing it was bound to be an emergency.

Espinoza’s voice boomed over the line. “Kelly? We’ve got a situation. Meet me down at St. James Hospital ASAP.”

“What happened?” she asked, already stripping off her robe.

“It’s Randi McCafferty. Someone just tried to pull the plug on her.”

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